Whitley Heights, Los Angeles

Hobart J. Whitley bought the hillside area in 1901 and 1903, and hired architect Arthur Barnes to build houses in a Mediterranean style he thought would suit Southern California's climate.[6] Five years later, Whitley Heights was seen as a "magnificent hill of forty acres situated in the very center of Hollywood and overlooking the entire city."

On June 30, 1907, a fire kindled by a resident at the foot of the hill swept over the land, which was covered by a heavy growth of wild mustard and barley, and destroyed "many rare and valuable trees and shrubs" Whitley had planted. It threatened a large reservoir owned by the United Hollywood Water Company atop the rise and burned several tons of hay. The fire was quenched the same day by the volunteer Hollywood fire department headed by E. Fossler.

As a contemporary account noted, "This hill has been one of the show places of Hollywood for some time. Here. Mr. Whitley intends erecting a handsome home at some future date, and toward this end, he has cultivated and beautified the grounds, laying them out in winding roads and planting a great variety of rare trees and shrubs, some of which were imported from the Hawaiian Islands and Mexico."[4][7][8][9][10]

Whitley had sold some of his land for one dollar to the water company for the reservoir about 1904 and bought it back 16 years later at a cost of $30,000.[11] In 1918, Whitley commissioned architect A.S. Barnes to design Whitley Heights as a Mediterranean village on the steep hillsides above Hollywood Boulevard. Whitley sent Barnes to tour the Mediterranean area to study its architecture and landscaping of Italy's historic hill towns before returning to the Southland, where he designed most of the Whitley Heights houses between 1918 and 1928. The development grew during the 1920s, and it became the first Hollywood celebrity community.[4][12][13] The streets in the development were dedicated to public use in 1920 and 1921, and they were improved by the city between 1924 and 1927. Most of them had no sidewalks, with stairways built from level to level to encourage walking.[10]

On the evening of June 23, 1920, the residential subdivision of Whitley Heights was opened with a festive barbecue that gathered an assemblage of businessmen and politicians. "The occasion was attended with a special significance as it was the scene of a reunion of many men who were connected with Mr. Whitley in his first efforts to make the vegetable gardens into a wealthy city more than twenty years ago, men who had gathered at a similar affair in 1902 to watch the turning on of the first electric lights in Hollywood," wrote The Times. The subdivision already had several homes on the terraces that divided the hill into four grades.[11] Three years later, in 1923, the Whitley Heights Civic Association was founded.[4]

The hill's narrow, winding streets, paved in 1926, connected by flights of pedestrian stairs and supported by retaining walls, still serve the community . . . Electrical lines and utilities placed in underground conduits, another novel concept for the times, as well as the original street lamps, function as they did in the late 1920s.

— Los Angeles Times[4]

In 1982, Whitley Heights was made a state historic district by the California Historical Resources Commission after research done by actor Brian Moore, president of Whitley Heights Homeowners. Moore traced property titles in the area, gathered old photographs and articles, and read through the papers of Hobart J. Whitley, which were housed in the special collections library at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He was impelled to begin his research in 1981 after a bungalow was demolished by a developer who wanted to build tract homes. To qualify for the designation, an area had to be at least 50 years old and retain many of its original characteristics. At the time almost all of the homes, with their red tile roofs, balconies, and arched windows and doorways, were original.[9] Later, the district was also made a national historic place, the first such in Hollywood.[4][6] In 2004, the area was made into a Los Angeles historic preservation overlay zone.

Over time, the placid nature of Whitley Heights and its 168 homes changed. In April 1983, the Whitley Heights Civic Association was incensed at a developer's plans to build an apartment complex on Las Palmas Avenue, which stirred up a community surge on behalf of fencing off streets around the neighborhood as protection against what one resident called "animal people" who walked up the hill to burglarize homes.[14]

By 1985, there were burglaries, assaults, vandalism, and car thefts. Prostitutes came up from nearby Hollywood Boulevard to work in parked cars, and the area extending north from Hollywood Boulevard into Whitley Heights had the highest crime rate in Hollywood. For four years, residents had been beseeching the city to approve the installation of 10 gates across the public streets leading into the community, and in May 1985, the Public Works Committee of the City Council agreed with the area's city council representative, Peggy Stevenson, and recommended that streets to the enclave be closed to non-residents.[5]

In 1991, the city issued a permit to the Whitley Heights Civic Association to allow the installation of gates that would turn the community into a private enclave. Construction, funded by Whitley Heights homeowners, began in January 1991 and was substantially completed by April 1992, at a cost of more than $350,000.

Construction was permanently halted in 1992 when a group called Citizens Against Gated Enclaves successfully sued to prevent the closure of public roadways in Whitley Heights. The trial court held that state law prohibited the city from withdrawing a street from public use in that fashion. An appellate court agreed, and the result was that the gates were removed at the expense of the Whitley Heights homeowners and the streets put back in good repair at the expense of the city, with all court costs paid by the defendants.[10]